1990 Miata 'The White Car'

Miata Challenge 2012; Watkins Glen

IMG_1128Monday, Jul 2 — Tuesday, Jul 3, 2012

Watkins Glen International , Watkins Glen, NY

EMRA – Eastern Motor Racing Association

IMG_1125‘The Glen’ is a bucket-list track of mine.  So happy I’ve been able to cross it off.  My father and I stayed at the historic Seneca Lodge and had a beer in the bar where legendary drivers once did.  Totally geeky/cool.

 

The car was flawless all weekend:  rolled it off the trailer, and checked pressures/ fuel between sessions.  Nothing broke, but I did blow through Turn 1 a couple of times.  Hurray for paved run-offs.watkins12garage

 

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On Monday (who races on Monday?), we ran 4×20 min sessions.  My last session was fastest @ 2:35.074.  Good enough for the win in Miata Challenge.

 

 

IMG_2118I had a fantastic time running with the mk1 Toyota MR2 of Scott Webster – even though we were in different classes, we would run together and drag our lap times down.  Nice guy, and great fun.  In our fastest session, he bested me by 0.476s.

 

On Tuesday (who races on a Tuesday?), we ran 5×25 min sessions.  That was a lot of seat-time!  My last session, was again, my fastest @ 2:33.253.  Shaving 1.8 seconds off was good for a days work.  Annnnd, I beat Scott by 0.112s!  Hey, I’ll take it.   A wise man once said, ” It doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning’s winning.”  Too true, Dom.

Interesting Miata track record stats:

  • SM – Andrew Carbonell  0:02:15.507  7/6/2014
  • SM2 – Robert Karl Jr.  0:02:19.422  9/17/2011
  • SM5 – Chris Windsor  0:02:16.977  5/26/2012
  • SMT – Ronald Jesberger  0:02:25.351  9/19/2009
  • SSM – Tom Kearney  0:02:20.559  9/14/2013

My car is not a spec miata, but there is clearly some room for driver / car improvement here.

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Here’s a video, shot from an iphone, on the shakiest home-made mount ever.  Youtube compresses the heck out of it, but it’s all we’ve got until I can figure out how to upload the good stuff from here….